


Body Language

by nobinaries



Category: Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 04:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12183117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nobinaries/pseuds/nobinaries
Summary: there is much that can be learned by watching what is unspoken.





	Body Language

Reading people was simple, usually.  They tended to broadcast their anger, happiness, joy, frustration through the slant of shoulders, the tightness of lips, the speed and timing of their gate.  It only took a bit of patience and attention to read all the things no one was willing to say.  Given the opportunity most people were as easy to read as children’s stories consumed in a moment and forgotten with little or no consequence.  At times, I’ve made a game of it; guessing in my head what someone was about to do or say, it certainly passed the time better than actually listening to the inane chatter that most folks claimed was conversation.  In recent months however, the game has lost some of its draw.  People were too simplistic to offer much of a long-term challenge. 

Until I saw her.  Oh how I feigned disinterest, hatred even, whenever she tried to engage me directly.  I did everything within my power to appear completely unavailable and uninterested in her.  Unfortunately, my tactics have proven quite effective and she believes deep in her heart that I have no interest in her.  How untrue that is, she fascinates me.  She occupies most of my waking thoughts and far more of my dreams than I will ever admit.  At first blush, she would seem as simple as her compatriots, shallow and silly but she isn’t.  The language of her is complex and intricate and will take years to fully decipher. 

I’m amazed that her friends are so oblivious.  They obsess over some small bit of gossip and she shows the thinnest veneer of interest, leaning in to catch the juicy tidbits, but if they were to take even a moment to really look at her they would see the woman in those blue eyes screaming to be let free, crying out to run.  I have not yet figured out where she wants to run to, in my more foolish moments I dream that it is somewhere toward me.  I know this thought is the height of self-indulgence but I can’t stop it from creeping in no matter how hard I try.  And believe me I’ve tried.  I have spent so much of my life trying to hide myself and avoid complication that I have no idea how to stop, even when I see her look at me from the table she shares with her cronies and the thing I see written in her eyes could only be described as longing.

I think that she must long for something I have, solitude maybe, or being different.  She spends so much of her energy fitting in my inability to do so must seem oddly appealing.  In my more petty moments the look I read in her eyes just makes me angry.  How dare someone with so much envy my lowly position.  She could choose to be different than she is, could choose to speak her mind.  I have no choice, no options.  I could never be her and she has no right to want to be me.  With everything she has she should not be so greedy as to pine for the thing that keeps me prisoner.

There are other moments, moments when we are alone in our most unfortunately shared room when I wonder if it is something I have she desires or if it is me.  The thought terrifies and excites me and I resist the pull of it, the truth of it written in the language of her face.  The widening of her eyes, the blush in her cheeks when I catch her watching me over the edge of her book or journal.  If she were looking at anyone other than me I wouldn’t even question the meaning of what is written there.  But the reality of the situation is that she is looking at me and that makes all the messages cloudy and difficult to read.  I can’t see clearly through my haze of conflicting emotions.

I am practiced at deciphering the gaze of others when they cast it upon a friend, enemy, or potential lover.  I am entirely too familiar with looks of shock and disgust when directed at me.  I even have an acquaintance with disappointment in the eyes of my father and my sister as I once again bring shame to the family name.  I can identify and categorize these looks, the words that come with them with almost disturbing ease.  I can tell by the way someone leans in during conversation if their interest is platonic or something more intimate.  A hand resting on an arm, a glance up through lashes each a clue easily cataloged, familiar.  Easily identifiable looks when they are between two strangers, or even two people i know, cast toward me they become something I can’t read.  She casts her eyes toward me and a slow warmth begins burning in my cheeks and ignites a flicker of something I can’t describe in my chest.  I have never seen anything that could be classified as vulnerability directed at me and I have no idea what to do with it.

I try and ignore the glances; pretend I can’t feel her gaze heavy upon me when she thinks she won’t be caught.  The weight of it is sometimes almost too much too bear it makes my skin prickle uneasily and I lash out with some biting comment designed to force her to hide in the book she is reading or bury her face in her pillows and pretend to cry over my behavior.  On this occasion, I actually watch the shaking of her shoulders and the hitching of her breath in her chest and, for the first time, it occurs to me that perhaps it is not affectation.  She is actually crying, she struggles to hide it from me but it is written all over her body.  She broadcasts the results of my petty cruelty for me to read, to feel, in the core of my cold heart.

I can read so much in her back, even the way she has turned away from me to protect her tender center from my biting anger and fear.  I know my insecurity and my defensiveness have hurt her, cut her to the quick, and there’s nothing I can do to take back my words or my actions.  I am left to stand in the middle of our room and stare unbelieving at what I have caused.  I can hear her struggle to swallow the sounds of her sobs, bury them in the pillows beneath her as though letting me hear them would hurt her all the more.  I shudder at the thought that perhaps she believes giving them full voice would give me some sort of perverse satisfaction, knowing I had brought the golden shining girl to this place.  I feel a pain suffuse my chest that I’ve never felt before.  It is some cocktail of sorrow and regret and shame that has never inhabited my consciousness.

I feel my throat tighten around useless words of apology and my internal struggle keeps me glued to the spot.  I want to rush to her side and offer what meager comforts I possess but I’m afraid.  I can’t quite identify the fear as it freezes me where I stand.  I think it may be fear of rejection but something in that thought doesn’t quite ring true.  I realize with an odd clarity that it isn’t fear of rejection but fear of acceptance.  What would I do if she accepted the comfort I offer if she curled up in my arms and cried on my shoulder?  I haven’t the first idea of how to respond in those types of situations.  No one, not even Nessa, has ever turned to me in their hour of need.

I know that she won’t actually turn to me.  That is painfully clear in how decidedly she has turned away from me.  If there is to be any hope of rectifying this situation it is up to me to do it.  I feel myself take a deep breath as if to infuse myself with some heretofore untapped strength or knowledge.  Almost before I’ve made the decision I feel my feet moving in tentative steps to her bed.  I haven’t the foggiest notion what I will do when I reach her but I do know with unexpected certainty that I have no choice but to try something, anything.

I reach the edge of her bed and sit at the foot.  I can tell she feels the shift of my weight on the mattress in the way her shoulders tighten and she seems to shrink a bit as if to accomplish the impossible of drawing even further from me.  The pain I had already felt over my actions doubles in my chest radiating a unique sort of ache from my heart outward to my limbs.  I’m also aware that if her sobs and her posture are any indications the pain I’m feeling seems weak in comparison to the pain I have caused.  Without conscious thought, I reach out my hand resting it on the warmth of her hip, the only part of her body I can reach from my seat.  I feel the muscle and flesh twitch at the touch and for a moment I assume it is a reflexive moment of revulsion until I note the slightest lessening in her tears.

The problem I find as my hand rests on her feeling her warmth through her night clothes is that I have no idea what to do now.  I have reached out, literally, and am now lost and adrift in entirely unfamiliar territory.  I feel her begin to shift under my hand and am momentarily terrified that she is going to turn and face me and I won’t be able to withstand the hurt in her tear stained face.  I am not as brave and strong as most assume.  I have well practiced defenses that are not at all practiced at dealing with the sincere tears of beautiful young women.  If I were a different person I may have the tools necessary to deal with this, but I am not a different person and neither is Glinda.

My worst fears are affirmed as her golden head lifts from her pillow and she turns to face me.  Her eyes are rimmed in red and I can see the tracks her tears have left down her cheeks.  I am momentarily fascinated and perturbed by the fact that she even looks beautiful when she cries.  There is no honest emotion that she expresses that diminishes her beauty.  She sniffles and I realize that I have been staring at her more blatantly than anything she had been doing.  The language of her is even more complex at this proximity, words and emotions written across her body.  I wish I could read the soft curving letters of her emotions as simply as the pages of the books I study, or most of the people.

Under typical circumstances I would wait for her to speak, not that it was usually a long wait.  These are not typical circumstances, however, and the silence begins to stretch between us.  We continue to stare at one another each trapped in our own unspoken emotions.  Her hurt and my confusion bounce between us until it becomes nearly unbearable.   I take another fortifying breath.  I am unwilling to let this tension continue it is only increasing the pain in my chest and the sadness in her eyes.  The blue of them is darkened to something stormy rather than the typical electricity that sparkles there.  It takes mere seconds for me to realize I want those sparks back and I am willing to do whatever I must in order to put them there. 

“I,” my voice catches in my throat either from emotion or lack of use.  I try very hard not to determine which cause is the actual one.  “I’m sorry.”  The words seem so tiny as they leave my lips, certainly not enough to repair the damage I’ve spent so long doing to any relationship that may have existed between us.  They feel small and inadequate to my ears and I can’t bear to look in her eyes any longer.  For lack of anything else to do I look down at where my dark hand rests against the bright white fabric of her nightdress.

The contrast is striking almost as though the negative image would remain if I shut my eyes, burned there rather like her presence has burned a space in my life.  I’m not certain when it happened, or how, in all reality I can’t seem to bring myself to care about the explanation.  It is quite a shocking realization, the simple fact that I don’t care.  I continue to stare at my hand resting on her thigh warm and soft through the delicate fabric and I know in some up to now undiscovered corner of my heart that the only thing I care about in this moment is her. 

My eyes move from my hand back to her face, I’m quite certain the look on my face reflects the shock that I feel.  This knowledge is confirmed by the sudden question that enters those eyes.  It surfaces through the hurt and the last traces of tears and causes one of her perfectly sculpted brows to rise as though punctuating her unspoken thoughts.  The expression on my face doesn’t change, I feel frozen in my clarity.  I’m sure there are any number of things I could say, should say, and yet those two words I spoke what seems like ages ago appear to be all I can muster.

“Your really are,” her voice is tentative as though clarity is slowly dawning on her as well, “aren’t you?”  The softness of her voice drifts to my ears and seems to take ages to penetrate the swirling thoughts and emotions that swarm around my brain.  I understand their individual meanings but what she is actually saying evades me somehow, the words drift just out of my grasp.

“I’m what?”  My voice sounds odd to my ears, lighter and yet not, it’s not a sound I’ve heard before and I’m almost distracted by it until I feel the light touch of her delicate fingers on my cheek.  She is drawing my attention to her face, her open gaze.  I’m captured between those eyes and her fingers on my skin it’s as though some moment of my fierce dreamings has become reality.  I had thought I had begun to grasp the language of her written in her expressions yet I have no idea what is happening.  Any power I thought I had in our dynamic is slipping away at remarkable speed.

“Sorry,” she says this word with certainty now, no more tentativeness in her tone.  Instead I can see surety and confidence return to the curve of her lip and the arch of her brow.  Her eyes glint with the familiar spark I had so missed moments ago.   I feel a flash of both joy and terror at this realization and at the entirely new spark I see before me.   All of the chapter and verse of her that I had painstakingly memorized seems to have disappeared, burned away by the look in her eyes. 

The analytical part of my mind can’t stop trying to decipher the details of what I see, to catalogue the clues and hints of what is going on behind that gaze.  I am unable to find any clarity in this typically comforting activity as analysis crashes violently into emotions I had little known I could possess.  I feel her hand, warm against the skin of my face.  Her fingers brush my hair behind my ear and the lightness of that touch speaks a language all its own; one that I’ve never heard before but recognize in some primal place.  Her presence fills the space around me crowding out everything else.  The quietness of the room has surrounded us and all I can hear is her breathing and the beat of my own heart in my ears.

The warmth of her touch seems to be melting me; fear, resistance, even guilt are dissolving away.  There is an almost eerie calm descending, as though the demons that drive me are settled and restful simply by being close to her.  She seems to ground me in the moment, require me to be present in a way I am unfamiliar with.  The tingling sensation that spreads from the places her fingers rest against my skin reminds me of magic without feeling out of control.  Though it seems clear I am completely out of control.  I could no more leave this moment, this place, than I could cease to breath. 

I yelled at her to try and take control back, to eliminate the feeling of her eyes upon me looking through my guards.  And now it seems all I’ve succeeded in doing is finding myself completely exposed under the warm caress of blue eyes and soft fingers.  Her face has taken on a new look, one of purpose and strength, that I’ve never seen before.  I have seen her bat her eyelashes at any number of suitors in order to get them to do what she wants and I’ve supposed that somewhere in her face there was what passed as desire in well-bred Gillikinese girls.  I am suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of what is desire in this particular well-bred Gillikinese girl.

All of those things I have seen in the language of her body, of her face, that I have denied; all of those things I’ve seen and written off as my own self-indulgent fantasy are suddenly real and burn away the cloak of denial I have conveniently wrapped around our relationship.   I am completely helpless as her hand slips into my hair and rests against the skin of my neck.  I’m not certain how it is I can still hear the sound of my pulse in my ears when I am quite certain my heart has stopped beating. 

Part of me expects her to speak, to say something that will burst the bubble that has enclosed around us.  She doesn’t, she simply leans in closer until I can feel the warmth of her breath on my lips.  All of my cluttered thoughts and aimless musings about the unspoken language of this woman fall away slipping silently into the ether.  There is only this moment and there is only her and for the first time in my troubled life that’s all I want.  There is no anxious wonder, no fear only the softest touch of the softest lips and words lose all meaning. 


End file.
